2012 SCT: Difficulty

[Madagascar Serpent Eagle]

I kind of like that idea. I know I brought up the idea of playing DI to my team, but none of us thought we were ready to compete at the DI ICT. Some system like that would have let us get two days of competition playing on challenging questions against teams equal to or superior to us, both this weekend and at the ICT, and let us learn more by hearing the DI SCT set.

[Bartleby]

I might point out that part of the issue is that "the best D2 players" (indeed, probably the top 15% or so) are way too good to really enjoy D2 SCT - perhaps if they were allowed to try to qualify for D2 ICT while playing in D1 SCT they would have a better time. This could be done by letting D2-eligible teams which register for D1 at their respective SCTs choose to not be in contention for a D1 ICT bid, instead they would seek to qualify to D2 ICT by statistics (D-value) only. Since they're not playing in D2, they wouldn't be contending for the D2 autobid, and since they're not trying to qualify to D1 ICT, they would not get a D1 autobid even if they win the D1 SCT that they enter themselves in.

Actually, I'd also propose eliminating the D2 autobid for winning D2 teams, since this system assumes that the best D2 players will choose to join the D1 field for playing purposes (though not statistical-qualification purposes). The D2 division winners are then no longer the best D2 teams and should not auto-qualify but should have to get D2 bids through D-value.

Now, I realize there may be difficulties I'm not thinking of at the moment, but would this idea make everyone happy? The best D2 players can enjoy similarly-leveled competitions (D1 SCT and D2 ICT) without having a boring day of clubbing baby seals, the D1 field can play challenging games against good D2 teams at SCT while waiting to face harder opposition at ICT, and the true novices can stay in D2 until they earn their promotion to D1 by qualifying to D2 ICT statistically. And this way, the D2 field every year will contain only the top 26 D2 teams in the country regardless of which SCT division they chose to play in, no weaker D2 teams getting autobids and leaving stronger teams "stuck" in D2 an extra year. (I've left the 6 community college spots in place in this proposal; that's for another whole discussion.)

Are there any significant parts of our demographic who would be unhappy with this system?

How would you compare D-values across the DI and DII set?

[Madagascar Serpent Eagle]

I might point out that part of the issue is that "the best D2 players" (indeed, probably the top 15% or so) are way too good to really enjoy D2 SCT - perhaps if they were allowed to try to qualify for D2 ICT while playing in D1 SCT they would have a better time. This could be done by letting D2-eligible teams which register for D1 at their respective SCTs choose to not be in contention for a D1 ICT bid, instead they would seek to qualify to D2 ICT by statistics (D-value) only. Since they're not playing in D2, they wouldn't be contending for the D2 autobid, and since they're not trying to qualify to D1 ICT, they would not get a D1 autobid even if they win the D1 SCT that they enter themselves in.

Actually, I'd also propose eliminating the D2 autobid for winning D2 teams, since this system assumes that the best D2 players will choose to join the D1 field for playing purposes (though not statistical-qualification purposes). The D2 division winners are then no longer the best D2 teams and should not auto-qualify but should have to get D2 bids through D-value.

Now, I realize there may be difficulties I'm not thinking of at the moment, but would this idea make everyone happy? The best D2 players can enjoy similarly-leveled competitions (D1 SCT and D2 ICT) without having a boring day of clubbing baby seals, the D1 field can play challenging games against good D2 teams at SCT while waiting to face harder opposition at ICT, and the true novices can stay in D2 until they earn their promotion to D1 by qualifying to D2 ICT statistically. And this way, the D2 field every year will contain only the top 26 D2 teams in the country regardless of which SCT division they chose to play in, no weaker D2 teams getting autobids and leaving stronger teams "stuck" in D2 an extra year. (I've left the 6 community college spots in place in this proposal; that's for another whole discussion.)

Are there any significant parts of our demographic who would be unhappy with this system?

How would you compare D-values across the DI and DII set?

Use the conversions now used for combined fields?

[grapesmoker]

Why are people so desperate to invent solutions in search of problems? The current system works fine! It does its job of qualifying teams for the ICT, after which they can do things like go on to play DI like everyone else. But no, let's fuck everything up sideways because three people on the boards are dissatisfied with the difficulty level.

[bradleykirksey]

Kenneth, it's an interesting system, but I think that the d-value formula wouldn't allow it.

My understanding is that DII questions are far easier, but the D value forumla would only give those DI teams a 1.1 bonus. This is in addition to having to play Chicago A and Harvad A.

it's a good plan, but they'd have to change the formula for the D value.


I don't know what to think about this plan, but what about a freshmen only division? Just a step down from these DII questions. This way, the Jedsons and UCF Cs could take a trip to ICT and feel engaged, but without making the div II questions have to necessarily be any easier. They could go up to their previous value. (On the other hand, I'm not sure how well this would work in places where there aren't a lot of teams already. Plus, it would likely cost more.)

[marnold]

Why are people so desperate to invent solutions in search of problems? The current system works fine! It does its job of qualifying teams for the ICT, after which they can do things like go on to play DI like everyone else. But no, let's fuck everything up sideways because three people on the boards are dissatisfied with the difficulty level.

This is so obviously correct. It should be shouted from the high heavens that D1 is what matters. D2 is great as a way of bringing people into the activity, but all this hand-wringing seems to think that it's an end-in-itself. It isn't. It barely matters, honestly, because the idea is you're supposed to do it it once (or LESS even [shockhorror]) and then move on to real quizbowl. In fact, I propose D2 be made continually easier until it's just 24 questions about George Washington and the Mona Lisa so people will take the hint and play D1.

[An Intergalactic Puzzlepalooza]

This is so obviously correct. It should be shouted from the high heavens that D1 is what matters. D2 is great as a way of bringing people into the activity, but all this hand-wringing seems to think that it's an end-in-itself. It isn't. It barely matters, honestly, because the idea is you're supposed to do it it once (or LESS even [shockhorror]) and then move on to real quizbowl. In fact, I propose D2 be made continually easier until it's just 24 questions about George Washington and the Mona Lisa so people will take the hint and play D1.

This is ridiculous, and seems so stuck up at points because of excessive hyperbole that it makes it hard to read. If it wasn't intended to be that way, and I'm just over-reading, please do ignore me being a bit of a butt.

Jerry's phrasing of this was accurate; current D2 SCT did divide the good teams from the bad teams on average, and therefore the occasional flaws it did have are statistically insignificant. The current qualification system does work fine, and the general difficulty of this set was fine too for where D2 players should be. His post does not in any way suggest making D2 into something so easy that no one, even someone who definitely ought to play it wants to play it, and you, who belong in D1, made his post into something it's not at the cost of those of us who belong in D2 for now.

The hand-wringing you're describing doesn't claim D2 to be an end-in-itself, but rather to be a temporary end. That is, we should be playing D2 for now, and so we would rather it be enjoyable and good competition. Overall, it was.

I'd agree with you that there are some people who are bound to play D2 when they should have played D1. The solution to this, however, is oncemore, not to make D2 unplayable for the people who should be playing it, and instead to just bear with the people who abuse/break the system. Players like Matt Jackson last year will always happen to break the system, after which they go play D1, and abuse of the system is pretty hard to do more than once with the new eligibility rules. So much like the problems that we're alleging (I'm not actually alleging these problems being an issue in terms of ICT qualifications, more in a "Well that was weird" sense), you've taken a few anecdotes about a few people who are playing D2 and shouldn't and turned that into something that would make D2 utterly worthless.

[Kyle]

Unless things have changed dramatically since 2006, the D2 ICT is not by any means a trivial tournament. It is, after all, intended to be a solid step up from the HSNCT. Unless the D2 ICT gets substantially easier, then the only thing people are complaining about is the D2 SCT. I find it hard to get all that worked up about the D2 SCT being too easy because this is a problem that literally cannot happen to you twice. As soon as you demonstrate that the D2 SCT has become too easy for you, you stop being eligible to play in it ever again. Problem solved.

EDIT - Although I do agree it is a problem when you can't get enough D1 teams together at your SCT site and thus have to play D2. But this strikes me as a problem of organization.

[Mike Bentley]

For what it's worth, the DII difficulty went over well in our weak region.

[marnold]

This is ridiculous, and seems so stuck up at points because of excessive hyperbole that it makes it hard to read. If it wasn't intended to be that way, and I'm just over-reading, please do ignore me being a bit of a butt.

Jerry's phrasing of this was accurate; current D2 SCT did divide the good teams from the bad teams on average, and therefore the occasional flaws it did have are statistically insignificant. The current qualification system does work fine, and the general difficulty of this set was fine too for where D2 players should be. His post does not in any way suggest making D2 into something so easy that no one, even someone who definitely ought to play it wants to play it, and you, who belong in D1, made his post into something it's not at the cost of those of us who belong in D2 for now.

The hand-wringing you're describing doesn't claim D2 to be an end-in-itself, but rather to be a temporary end. That is, we should be playing D2 for now, and so we would rather it be enjoyable and good competition. Overall, it was.

I'd agree with you that there are some people who are bound to play D2 when they should have played D1. The solution to this, however, is oncemore, not to make D2 unplayable for the people who should be playing it, and instead to just bear with the people who abuse/break the system. Players like Matt Jackson last year will always happen to break the system, after which they go play D1, and abuse of the system is pretty hard to do more than once with the new eligibility rules. So much like the problems that we're alleging (I'm not actually alleging these problems being an issue in terms of ICT qualifications, more in a "Well that was weird" sense), you've taken a few anecdotes about a few people who are playing D2 and shouldn't and turned that into something that would make D2 utterly worthless.

I don't really understand this. Maybe you think I was being sarcastic? I wasn't; SCT was a really good tournament and I don't have much interest in stale jersey-popping on the internet saying it was flawed because it was too easy. I'm especially not interested in it because D2 is just sort of a sideshow, so even if the set were preposterously easy, that would also be fine because maybe then people would start playing the real game and not D2.

[Fond du lac operon]

Yes, let's just get rid of DII so that high school students from Alabama have to go from nonpyramidal tossups about the Mona Lisa to tossups about "Darwin Among the Machines," that's an excellent idea that won't discourage anybody.

[Smuttynose Island]

Yes, let's just get rid of DII so that high school students from Alabama have to go from nonpyramidal tossups about the Mona Lisa to tossups about "Darwin Among the Machines," that's an excellent idea that won't discourage anybody.

I'm not sure if you understand what people have been saying. No one and I mean no one has advocated for the elimination of DII SCT. What they are saying is that DII SCT and probably, to a lesser degree, ICT don't matter nearly enough to go to such lengths to accommodate the top 5% of people who play the set, people who should probably have played DI if that was at all possible.

[marnold]

So, your argument is that D2 is way too easy, just a bunch of high school clues on college-type answers lines, but D1 IS IMPOSSIBLE? Despite the fact this D1 set was the easiest SCT ever written, and was very accessible both in clue choice and answer-lines?

Look, before I somehow get sucked into a protracted fight with more Alabamians, I really don't think my arguments here are controversial. This SCT was easy and that's good. One of the best crusades Matt Weiner ever waged was getting (most) people to stop crying "stock" and "too easy" as code for "I know some clues." But anyway, this is just D2 SCT we're talking about. If it missed on the easy side, that's also fine because real quizbowl players should be playing real quizbowl, while D2 is precisely for freshmen who have only played Alabama local-format questions. Thinking that D2 is the real tournament and D1 is just some super-nerd extra division is why D1 turn-out is so low and why the same schools play D2 year after year and just retire when they lose their eligibility. Instead, quizbowl should emphasize that D1 is the one driving the trolley.

[bt_green_warbler]

tossups about "Darwin Among the Machines"

For the record, this has never been an ICT answer (and the last time we even used it as a clue was in the middle part of a bonus at the 2000 DI ICT).

[An Intergalactic Puzzlepalooza]

How I read Jerry's post in thoroughly reduced form: We're fine as we are, SCT keeps bad teams from playing ICT, and doesn't get rid of any really good ones.

How I read your posts in thoroughly reduced form: Screw D2, it's only for bringing people in, and not for anyone with any actual Quiz Bowl skill. Nobody cares about anything but D1, even at the ICT level.

There is a place for D2 in Quiz Bowl, and your system makes it unplayable to the people who should be playing it so that they don't have a useful spot to go to. It's not useful for a group of four freshmen of whom only one has ever played pyramidal questions before to be compared to, in my case, Georgia Tech A. That'll end at somewhere near 700-50 on a good day for the four freshmen.

This is what the role of D2 is supposed to be in my mind: to separate two sets of teams that are clearly not ready to compete with each other.

Auburn is clearly not ready to compete with, say, Harvard A; locally speaking, if we had played D1, we would have had to face Georgia Tech, UGA, and Alabama A (I'm assuming Georgia Tech wouldn't have been granted a waiver to go to Blacksburg if they would have been the fourth team in D1 at our site). If we do that, UGA and Alabama actually did beat us by 500 each, and Georgia Tech would have beaten us by more.

Edit: For clarification, I agree D1 is more important than D2. It seems, however, that you're jumping too far onto D1 being more important than D2, and making D2 utterly worthless.

[grapesmoker]

Yes, let's just get rid of DII so that high school students from Alabama have to go from nonpyramidal tossups about the Mona Lisa to tossups about "Darwin Among the Machines," that's an excellent idea that won't discourage anybody.

Someone's been reading last year's ACF Nationals..

[Fond du lac operon]

Joseph said what I wanted to better than I could. DII should be easy, but saying "Let's make it EVEN EASIER so that people with some skills but who have never played collegiate quizbowl before have to go to DI!" is exactly the wrong thing to do. Also, I don't think making DII easier will convince the people who drop out once they lose eligibility to play up to DI; on the contrary, I think a lot of them are basically lost causes when it comes to playing regular-difficulty tournaments, and the remainder should be able to play tournaments that provide a good gradient of difficulty between high-school IS-type questions and something like DI SCT or ACF Regionals.

And yeah, I took "Darwin Among the Machines" from last year's ACF Nationals, because hyperbole is fun.

[grapesmoker]

How I read Jerry's post in thoroughly reduced form: We're fine as we are, SCT keeps bad teams from playing ICT, and doesn't get rid of any really good ones.

How I read your posts in thoroughly reduced form: Screw D2, it's only for bringing people in, and not for anyone with any actual Quiz Bowl skill. Nobody cares about anything but D1, even at the ICT level.

Note that these two positions are not incompatible. D2 is fine as it is; it also exists primarily for separating people into two groups based on experience, with the intent that those who start from the bottom group ascend to the top group. We see this every year: people play D2 once, do reasonably well in it, and give up. This is a lousy thing for quizbowl, but it's going to keep happening so long as people are intent on viewing themselves as basically unable to compete on level ground with the better teams.

[marnold]

Screw D2, it's only for bringing people in, and not for anyone with any actual Quiz Bowl skill.

Well, I guess you do get my position, then.

There is a place for D2 in Quiz Bowl, and your system makes it unplayable to the people who should be playing it so that they don't have a useful spot to go to. It's not useful for a group of four freshmen of whom only one has ever played pyramidal questions before to be compared to, in my case, Georgia Tech A. That'll end at somewhere near 700-50 on a good day for the four freshmen.

This is what the role of D2 is supposed to be in my mind: to separate two sets of teams that are clearly not ready to compete with each other.

I obviously agree with this, but the idea that you - someone who thinks "Cup of Gold" is a laughably easy clue - belongs more in the lower group than the higher is patently absurd. And to say that I would make D2 unplayable is also ridiculous: your position would make D2 not have stock clue lead-ins (because, quelle horreur, there might be a buzzer race between two teams that are going to qualify anyway) which is significantly worse for teams truly starting at nothing.

Auburn is clearly not ready to compete with, say, Harvard A;

See, this is exactly the problem. Lots of teams (like mine) get K(tf)O by Harvard. To say "wow, I can't compete with Harvard, or Georgia Tech or [insert any established program]" means "wow, I better never play those teams by hiding in D2 forever" is keeping D1 fields so small.

[grapesmoker]

And yeah, I took "Darwin Among the Machines" from last year's ACF Nationals, because hyperbole is fun.

Hyperbole may be fun but in this case it's misguided. You would probably never play this question in a hundred years of ICT, much less SCT. You are taking literally one of the hardest questions from one of the hardest national tournaments of the last decade to somehow make the point that DI SCT is going to be too hard, or something like that. It's a ridiculous exaggeration of what's actually going on.

[RyuAqua]

I'd agree with you that there are some people who are bound to play D2 when they should have played D1. The solution to this, however, is oncemore, not to make D2 unplayable for the people who should be playing it, and instead to just bear with the people who abuse/break the system. Players like Matt Jackson last year will always happen to break the system, after which they go play D1, and abuse of the system is pretty hard to do more than once with the new eligibility rules. So much like the problems that we're alleging (I'm not actually alleging these problems being an issue in terms of ICT qualifications, more in a "Well that was weird" sense), you've taken a few anecdotes about a few people who are playing D2 and shouldn't and turned that into something that would make D2 utterly worthless.

Oh hey, my name was dropped. I realize the discussion has kinda moved on from this, and this quote was couched in a broader point, but I wanted to address it briefly before the ship totally sails.

I'm not sure how I or my team from last year "broke the system" in any way. We were all eligible to play Division II, so we chose to play, prepared for it, and won all our games by showing that we knew enough to beat the other teams we played. Is there anything wrong with this? Other good high school players have chosen, and will continue to choose, to play DI, but I see nothing illegitimate about my choice to play Division II, a tournament for which I was eligible and prepared, last year.

[Cheynem]

The only thing I have to say about Matt Jackson is that he was laughably overqualified to play DII. This is not really a problem provided he does not demand DII cater to his needs by becoming harder, which if I recall, he never did. He played it, won it, partied down or got high or whatever he does to celebrate, and then moved on. It only "breaks the system" if people think that because an extremely good freshman did really well on a set it was too easy.

Michael Arnold is being sort of assholeishly endearing here, but I agree with like him and Jerry: There isn't a problem with DII as it is. In trying to further correct a nonexistent problem, we will further create a gap between DI and DII. DII is an easy set; you play it, you do well on it if you're a decent player (and, there were plenty of teams at our site that only did so-so at it!). That's not saying there's a few questions here and there that could use some tweaking (hey, that also happens in DI!), but there isn't a big problem. Good teams may find it hard to distinguish between each other at DII SCT; that's okay, they can do that more accurately at DII ICT.

EDIT: I will take Jerry's bet that "Darwin Among the Machines" comes up at an ICT in the next five years.

[Fond du lac operon]

And to say that I would make D2 unplayable is also ridiculous: your position would make D2 not have stock clue lead-ins (because, quelle horreur, there might be a buzzer race between two teams that are going to qualify anyway) which is significantly worse for teams truly starting at nothing.

I can't speak for Joseph, but my opposition to stock clue lead-ins has less to do with the possibility of buzzer races between good teams and more to do with the fact that buzzing on a stock clue lead-in is absolutely no fun for anyone who's seen a bunch of stock clues. I think SCT can do its job of distinguishing between teams on the ICT margin and still be relatively fun for the teams higher up in the ICT race.

[Tees-Exe Line]

I think I've figured out what's going on here:

http://www.cdc.gov/breastfeeding/pdf/mP ... labama.pdf

Alabama scores 47th on the CDC's Breastfeeding Survey. Obviously it lies with quizbowl to rectify the problem.

[Susan]

I think I've figured out what's going on here:

http://www.cdc.gov/breastfeeding/pdf/mP ... labama.pdf

Alabama scores 47th on the CDC's Breastfeeding Survey. Obviously it lies with quizbowl to rectify the problem.

Uh, are you volunteering?

[grapesmoker]

I can't speak for Joseph, but my opposition to stock clue lead-ins has less to do with the possibility of buzzer races between good teams and more to do with the fact that buzzing on a stock clue lead-in is absolutely no fun for anyone who's seen a bunch of stock clues. I think SCT can do its job of distinguishing between teams on the ICT margin and still be relatively fun for the teams higher up in the ICT race.

Given SCT's length limitations and the presence of the clock, I'm going to say that no, it's really not possible to make SCT DII accessible to all and provide fine-grained discrimination at the top. I'm not pulling rank on you when I say that better and more experienced people than you have tried this, and this is pretty much what people settled on. You'll play DII and hopefully move on from there to more competitive tournaments.

[marnold]

Michael Arnold is being sort of assholeishly endearing here

i'm ur new bicycle

[An Intergalactic Puzzlepalooza]

I'm not sure how I or my team from last year "broke the system" in any way. We were all eligible to play Division II, so we chose to play, prepared for it, and won all our games by showing that we knew enough to beat the other teams we played. Is there anything wrong with this? Other good high school players have chosen, and will continue to choose, to play DI, but I see nothing illegitimate about my choice to play Division II, a tournament for which I was eligible and prepared, last year.

I see nothing illegitimate about it either, but it's still accurate to say that you would have been closer in terms of skill level to most D1 team than to any D2 teams; Thus, breaking the system

I obviously agree with this, but the idea that you - someone who thinks "Cup of Gold" is a laughably easy clue - belongs more in the lower group than the higher is patently absurd. And to say that I would make D2 unplayable is also ridiculous: your position would make D2 not have stock clue lead-ins (because, quelle horreur, there might be a buzzer race between two teams that are going to qualify anyway) which is significantly worse for teams truly starting at nothing.

The thing is, in my understanding, Cup of Gold generally is considered to be a laughably easy clue. And actually, I think this establishes really well who you think should play D2.

As I see it, there are three sets of quiz bowl teams: Teams which are well-established in Quiz Bowl; the middle tier of teams which are comprised of people who are familiar with Quiz Bowl enough to answer stock clues on hearing them; and teams that are too new to have things figured out.

What you're suggesting is that the first two sets should all be in D1. What I'm suggesting is that the middle tier should be part of D2, because other than a very limited stock knowledge, true knowledge hasn't generally set in yet.

See, this is exactly the problem. Lots of teams (like mine) get K(tf)O by Harvard. To say "wow, I can't compete with Harvard, or Georgia Tech or [insert any established program]" means "wow, I better never play those teams by hiding in D2 forever" is keeping D1 fields so small.

The tense is key in understanding what I meant on this part; We are not, in the present, ready to compete with teams who combine for more years of college quiz bowl experience than number of years I've been alive. We will be, and we're moving towards this, but for now, we belong in DII, if just for this year, because we still have freshman problems, and we just frankly haven't had enough time. We aren't going to hide from established programs, per se, but it makes no sense for us to try and play against teams currently well over our head as we work to become better.

Joey and I are actually split as to whether or not we should play D1 or D2 next year, and I'm the one arguing that next year we should play D1, independent of whether or not we qualify for ICT. But this year, we simply aren't good enough to go and try and compete with the D1 teams in our region, as evidenced by our results against the two D1 teams at our site.

[Emily Krok]

I'm not sure where the idea that DI SCT is TOO HARD is coming from. I played DII SCT [and ICT] last year, had fun, enjoyed myself, put up good but by no means earth-shattering numbers, and played DI this year and did the exact same thing. My team went 0-10. 0-10! I still enjoyed myself, did not find the set too hard, and thought my team played well. DII is fine for what it is, and I'm glad it gave me the year of prep so that I didn't find DI impossible or whatever people are claiming freshmen would find DI.

[jmannor2]

Joseph, not once have I expressed my sentiments with you on what division we should play in next year. So don't say we are split on a decision when you don't actually know what I think.

[theMoMA]

Let me first interject by saying that I think that R. Hentzel and Chad Kubicek (in my understanding, those two did the heavy lifting on the DII set) did a superb job creating a set that is both fair and accessible for nearly every team that played. That's a hard thing to do. It's possible that they erred too easy on occasion; Cup of Gold or "Edward Everett" may be such occasions, but those are just two questions out of hundreds, and from my experience, they did an overwhelmingly good job.

Let me speak for my own philosophy on SCT here. It's is a tournament in itself, yes. And we do our best to make sure that each game is decided on questions that are a fair test of knowledge. But SCT's primary goal is to identify the top 32 teams to invite to ICT. If we ever get to the point where the 32nd- and 33rd-best DII teams in the country are buzzer-racing on a significant percentage of NAQT's DII lead-ins, then we might need to reconsider the difficulty of DII. But as it stands, teams that are comfortably within the qualification range might have to endure a few early clues that both teams know, because the purpose of SCT goes beyond writing lead-ins that differentiate between two qualification-worthy teams. We also care about engaging teams that aren't on the cusp of qualification.

In other words, please keep in mind that this is the qualification tournament to NAQT's second-tier national championship tournament. To differentiate between teams of higher caliber, NAQT not only puts on a sectional championship and a national championship at the DI level, but a national championship at this very level designed to finely rank the very teams that played DII SCT. I encourage you to play ICT if you're concerned with such a fine-tuned ranking, but SCT isn't really the place for the vast majority of your critiques.

[Mechanical Beasts]

We are not, in the present, ready to compete with teams who combine for more years of college quiz bowl experience than number of years I've been alive.

See, this is the James Johnson sentiment alive and well. (He proposed having a separate graduate division.)

You have been alive eighteen years, give or take. The hypothetical team with more college quizbowl experience than you have years on earth is, historically, a viable ACF Nationals winner, not your median opponent in the rough-and-tumble world of DI SCT. For example, take ACF Nationals 2010 runner-up Minnesota, with two seniors and two juniors (total: fourteen years experience). There is no evidence that many DI teams have eighteen years of experience combined, and there is less evidence that such teams have a major advantage over other less-experienced teams. I'll take a match between Harvard and Alabama, because Jake Sundberg loves it when I rub it in (right?): 2011 ICT. A 455 point match in our favor, when we had twelve years of experience combined and they had seventeen.

[cornfused]

Let me first interject by saying that I think that R. Hentzel and Chad Kubicek (in my understanding, those two did the heavy lifting on the DII set) did a superb job creating a set that is both fair and accessible for nearly every team that played. That's a hard thing to do. It's possible that they erred too easy on occasion; Cup of Gold or "Edward Everett" may be such occasions, but those are just two questions out of hundreds, and from my experience, they did an overwhelmingly good job.

Let me speak for my own philosophy on SCT here. It's is a tournament in itself, yes. And we do our best to make sure that each game is decided on questions that are a fair test of knowledge. But SCT's primary goal is to identify the top 32 teams to invite to ICT. If we ever get to the point where the 32nd- and 33rd-best DII teams in the country are buzzer-racing on a significant percentage of NAQT's DII lead-ins, then we might need to reconsider the difficulty of DII. But as it stands, teams that are comfortably within the qualification range might have to endure a few early clues that both teams know, because the purpose of SCT goes beyond writing lead-ins that differentiate between two qualification-worthy teams. We also care about engaging teams that aren't on the cusp of qualification.

In other words, please keep in mind that this is the qualification tournament to NAQT's second-tier national championship tournament. To differentiate between teams of higher caliber, NAQT not only puts on a sectional championship and a national championship at the DI level, but a national championship at this very level designed to finely rank the very teams that played DII SCT. I encourage you to play ICT if you're concerned with such a fine-tuned ranking, but SCT isn't really the place for the vast majority of your critiques.

I know quoting for truth isn't allowed anymore, but this is exactly how I feel on the subject.

For the record, a Lawrence team playing in DII (one freshman with no HS experience, three sophomores with no HS experience, and a junior who didn't play until his sophomore year of college) put up just under 17 PPB and 250 PP20H on this set, so they're probably somewhere between the median team for the tournament and the minimum D-value needed to make it to DII ICT.

And they had a blast. Basically no tossup answer lines they'd never heard of, basically no first-clue buzzes that weren't on topics they felt they deserved power on.

At least for this one example - but admittedly also for the other teams I saw at the Chicago site - the set and the tourney experience were excellent.

[Susan]

Would NAQT ever consider switching to a much more restrictive definition of D2 (existing limits plus players must be in their first two years of collegiate quizbowl, limiting it to the first year of collegiate quizbowl period, whatever) OR expanding the D2 field significantly? It seems to me that either of these would greatly expand the pool of quizbowlers who had to play DI and would (theoretically) make DI more dilute and less scary.

Also, this has probably been covered already but I can't roll my eyes hard enough at, "We are not, in the present, ready to compete with teams who combine for more years of college quiz bowl experience than number of years I've been alive." Aren't you playing against these teams anyway in every other tournament besides SCT and ICT?

[Bartleby]

And even saying "we aren't ready to compete with School X" doesn't mean that you aren't ready to play Div I questions. I've played Div I my entire university career because the other people who went to SCT were Div I-eligible, and while it was overwhelming in first year, the last two years I've more or less found my niche. Last year, we even qualified for ICT where we went and were obliterated by teams like Brown and Chicago... which we expected. There's a reason that certain schools are held up as the big bad boogeymen of quiz bowl: because they're better than the other schools out there, DI or DII be damned.

[grapesmoker]

We are not, in the present, ready to compete with teams who combine for more years of college quiz bowl experience than number of years I've been alive.

I really can't think of very many teams that match this description, and certainly not any in your region. When I graduated in 2010, I had been playing since 1996, if you want to count appalling SoCal weekly high school competitions as "quizbowl," or since 2000 if we're just looking at the college game. In 2010 I was one of the most senior people playing and virtually all of the ones who were my contemporaries have also graduated. Most of the best teams in the country are made up primarily of undergraduates such as yourself (c.f. both of last year's ACF Nationals champions).

If you want to get good, get good. It takes a lot of work, but you can do it, and you'll primarily be competing against people very much like yourself. The odds of you ever having to play horrible old dinosaurs like me are slim to nil unless you come to Chicago Open or some other such thing.

[Cheynem]

And even then Jerry's pretty beatable because he gets tired at 4 PM and wants to go to the buffet.

[grapesmoker]

And even then Jerry's pretty beatable because he gets tired at 4 PM and wants to go to the buffet.

By 4 PM I barely know my own name, much less who beat whom at the Battle of Chaeronea.

[bt_green_warbler]

Would NAQT ever consider switching to a much more restrictive definition of D2 (existing limits plus players must be in their first two years of collegiate quizbowl, limiting it to the first year of collegiate quizbowl period, whatever) OR expanding the D2 field significantly? It seems to me that either of these would greatly expand the pool of quizbowlers who had to play DI and would (theoretically) make DI more dilute and less scary.

I think we would be open to expanding the size of the Division II field; restricting Division II eligibility to first-year players was something we tried in 1997-2000 (or thereabouts) and it did not work as well as the current system.

[The Ununtiable Twine]

Yes, let's just get rid of DII so that high school students from Alabama have to go from nonpyramidal tossups about the Mona Lisa to tossups about "Darwin Among the Machines," that's an excellent idea that won't discourage anybody.

Someone's been reading last year's ACF Nationals..

Jerry, that's nonsense. Quizbowl players at Alabama only read high school sets.

[The Ununtiable Twine]

We are not, in the present, ready to compete with teams who combine for more years of college quiz bowl experience than number of years I've been alive.

See, this is the James Johnson sentiment alive and well. (He proposed having a separate graduate division.)

You have been alive eighteen years, give or take. The hypothetical team with more college quizbowl experience than you have years on earth is, historically, a viable ACF Nationals winner, not your median opponent in the rough-and-tumble world of DI SCT. For example, take ACF Nationals 2010 runner-up Minnesota, with two seniors and two juniors (total: fourteen years experience). There is no evidence that many DI teams have eighteen years of experience combined, and there is less evidence that such teams have a major advantage over other less-experienced teams. I'll take a match between Harvard and Alabama, because Jake Sundberg loves it when I rub it in (right?): 2011 ICT. A 455 point match in our favor, when we had twelve years of experience combined and they had seventeen.

I love you, Andrew Watkins.

All kidding aside, after the beatdown, what did we do about it? We improved, that's what. We expect to compete with the best in the nation, and we expect nothing less than the best effort from everyone on our team in this regard. Even the experienced teams have to have learning experiences sometimes, and one of ours was last year.

The DII SCT is a learning tool for novice teams. It has a very specific goal and it did a wonderful job of meeting that goal this year. I commend NAQT on the work they did to make the set as accessible to newcomers as it did while at the same time the set was used to determine which teams were the best in each region.

Correction: Dargan began his collegiate career in 1995. It's like his ninth or tenth year playing overall.

[An Intergalactic Puzzlepalooza]

See, this is the James Johnson sentiment alive and well. (He proposed having a separate graduate division.)

(I'm still not exactly sure who this is, but I've been informed this is approximately the equivalent of being called like Chip Beall or the like)

But anyhow, I like to think I hold one key difference from who I've generally heard he is; I don't think, as I suppose he did, that D2 should be praised over D1. I agree with you all that D1 is more important than D2 and that it's much moreso.

The deliberately hyperbolic statement I made on the age thing was more to point out -- half jokingly -- how different we were from Alabama A and Georgia Tech A, and also to point out that using "knows arguably the most stock clue ever" as where the line for playing D1/D2 should be is not at least within common realms of reasonable thought.

Honestly, I don't think it's ideal for people to play D2 after a year on pyramidal stuff, but logistically speaking when your team has 5 people, and 4 of them have no pyramidal experience, that team should play D2, even if it's not perfect circumstances. Regardless, spending your one reasonable year in D2 ought be considered perfectly okay.

(Oh, and given the number of people who have been throwing out things along the lines of "This is the SCT for the D2; All it has to do is sort out the worst teams," I thought I should reclarify that I agree with Jerry when he says that D2 has no major problem as is, and that the set did a great job of sorting out the worst teams.)

(And for something that might be found hilarious, this conversation got me compared to a teacup corgi at practice today)

[bt_green_warbler]

For reference

[Susan]

Would NAQT ever consider switching to a much more restrictive definition of D2 (existing limits plus players must be in their first two years of collegiate quizbowl, limiting it to the first year of collegiate quizbowl period, whatever) OR expanding the D2 field significantly? It seems to me that either of these would greatly expand the pool of quizbowlers who had to play DI and would (theoretically) make DI more dilute and less scary.

I think we would be open to expanding the size of the Division II field; restricting Division II eligibility to first-year players was something we tried in 1997-2000 (or thereabouts) and it did not work as well as the current system.

I don't want to belabor this too much, but how did it not work as well? I'm just curious, as the circuit of 1997-2000 was substantially different from today's circuit.

[Sulawesi Myzomela]

I think rather than a hard and fast year cut-off, standards along the line of EACN would probably be more appropriate for DII. However I'm not sure that urgent change is needed in the system, which generally works quite well, the arguments in this thread notwithstanding.

[An Intergalactic Puzzlepalooza]

For reference

Oh, eww, the grammar/block writing is bad enough that the content almost seems less objectionable by comparison.

But yeah, comparing my suggestion that it's okay to spend one year in D2 when you're a freshman who's in his first year on pyramidal questions to anything he said is probably the most hyperbolic thing said in a thread which is way too full of hyperbole to start with (Ironically, there's another one).

That said, I did quite enjoy "this is a stupid idea and you're stupid for having it" as an argument, but I'm guessing based off the title that everyone just really wanted him to shut up at that point, since pretty much every argument had been exhausted.

[Mechanical Beasts]

For reference

Oh, eww, the grammar/block writing is bad enough that the content almost seems less objectionable by comparison.

But yeah, comparing my suggestion that it's okay to spend one year in D2 when you're a freshman who's in his first year on pyramidal questions to anything he said is probably the most hyperbolic thing said in a thread which is way too full of hyperbole to start with (Ironically, there's another one).

That said, I did quite enjoy "this is a stupid idea and you're stupid for having it" as an argument, but I'm guessing based off the title that everyone just really wanted him to shut up at that point, since pretty much every argument had been exhausted.

Pretty accurate.

We're not contesting the point that "it's okay to spend one year in D2." The argument we're making is that if you're good enough at quizbowl to say 'HOW DARE CUP OF GOLD BE A LEADIN' then you have graduated from D2. The people who need to have finely gradated games on D2 questions are not all buzzer-racing on every STOCK LEADIN, because if you're fighting to qualify to D2 ICT, you most likely don't know that tier of clues.

The reason we're using linguistic approximations for these statements is because we have made these arguments eleven billion times.

The only reason that we compared these arguments to a certain illustrious predecessor is because of the "DI is full of teams that gave up on showering because their body dirt now plays host to an ecosystem that presses the buzzer for them" meme. DI does not equal old; old does not equal good.

[Fond du lac operon]

The reason we're using linguistic approximations for these statements is because we have made these arguments eleven billion times.

Of course, if I were feeling argumentative, I'd say that raises the question: is there something wrong with the DII set that people keep making these arguments, or is it just due to a fairly arbitrary moral judgment about what tradeoffs the NAQT writers/editors are willing to make? I gather that the second is closer to the truth, so I'm only going to raise the question in an utterly deniable way.


Edit: Also, I want an ecosystem on my body that presses the buzzer for me.

[Smuttynose Island]

The reason we're using linguistic approximations for these statements is because we have made these arguments eleven billion times.

Of course, if I were feeling argumentative, I'd say that raises the question: is there something wrong with the DII set that people keep making these arguments

People keep making this argument every year because every year people who are overqualified for DII and who generally fail to understand the point of DII play DII and then complain about it. These people comprise a very small percentage of the population that plays DII, most of whom are not vocal about how DII was difficulty appropriate or even potentially too hard, because they really don't have access to the boards or don't know better. It is unreasonable to target an entire set at such a small portion of the playing population, and it is really unreasonable to target ANY part of a set whose explicit purpose is to help introduce novices to quizbowl (when I say novice I mean both someone who 1. Doesn't know a lot and 2. Has minimal to no experience playing pyramidal quizbowl. Just to be sure that's an "AND" not an "OR")

[The Motley Eye]

At Virginia Tech, we had 12 teams competing in Division II. Of those, the field included two circuit regulars (Ga Tech, UNC), a couple teams that only show up occasionally on the circuit (Va Tech, Liberty, North Greenville?), and a bunch of teams from the Big South conference who don't usually play anything more than the Big South tournament (run on IS-111 this year) and Sectionals. Radford's team was hastily-assembled in the week before the Big South tournament from a group of kids who live in a dorm together.

Every team I talked to on Saturday had a great experience. I think just about every team scored between 10 and 20 PPB (this is based on memory and may be a bit fuzzy), and even at the end of the day, everyone seemed to be in great spirits and not intimidated by the competition or the difficulty of the questions. Even between the bottom teams I saw probably at most about 1/3 of the tossups in any room go dead.